


If You're Faster

by LunerSoul997



Series: To Hear Your Song Again [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Gen, M/M, Werewolf Bucky Barnes, Werewolf Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:27:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28368393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunerSoul997/pseuds/LunerSoul997
Summary: He expects a growl, maybe some snarling. Definitely some irritation."How did you find me?" In a weary, hesitant tone, is not something he expected.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: To Hear Your Song Again [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2031286
Comments: 5
Kudos: 59





	If You're Faster

"Captain."

_Burnt Cedar, Candy Apples, Paprika._

He greets Wanda with a closed-mouth smile. He likes Wanda, likes how contradictory she is. He likes how her scent is so unique. He likes how clever she is, he likes her kindness. He likes how she reminds him of Edith. 

He doesn't like how weary Tony is of her. He doesn't like how tense Bruce becomes when in the same room as her. He doesn't like her 'magic' with its uncanny aura and destructive capabilities.

Capabilities that the whole world has seen. Capabilities that have killed civilians.

It had been an accident, of course. But still... He wonders if she's even aware of what something like her was capable of.

"You shouldn't watch that," he says, nodding at the television. It, along with most news stations, was covering the disaster in Lagos. Wanda doesn't seem to hear him, simply staring listlessly at the tv.

It's days like these that make his retirement fund seem very, very appealing. Killing had never sat well with him, but every day his hatred of his career both dulled and doubled. He tries to convince himself that he's helping people, but that curtain had been ripped back more than once.

He takes the remote from her hands and switches the tv off.

"It's my fault," she says. Her voice is scratchy, and her cheeks are blotched. She had been crying.

He can't help the pang of grief he feels at seeing her so broken. "That's not true,"

"Turn the tv back on," She says, looking up at him with glassy eyes. "They're being _very_ specific."

Steve sighs softly. Her blame is misplaced, as is her guilt. He lowers himself onto her bed. "I should have clocked that bomb vest long before you had to deal with it," he murmurs. She starts to shake her head, but he cuts in before she can argue. "Rumlow said 'Bucky' and all of a sudden I was a sixteen-year-old kid again, in Brooklyn."

All of a sudden he was watching Bucky silently piece himself back together in the backseat of Mr. Fletcher's car. Watching his blank eyes. Watching as blood trickled down his chin, seeped into his boxers. Wanting to comfort but not knowing how.

"And people died," he whispers. He's killed a lot of people, his hands are drenched in blood and his scent is caked with violence. He hates it, he hates it and he wants to _stop_ but he _can't_ because how the hell do you _stop fighting_ when it's what you were made for?

"It's on me," he says, because what's a few more drops of blood to him? Wanda has her whole life ahead of her, and he won't let her be demonized for a fucking _mistake._

"It's on both of us," Wanda says, looking down at her feet. 

He could give her a speech about how you can't always save everybody, and about how they need to cope with the shit that they see out there. He saves his breath. He doesn't feel like being a hypocrite today.

Steve tenses at a sudden sound to his left. _Metal, Magic, Tea leaves._ Vision.

"Vis," Wanda sighs. "We talked about this."

"Yes, but the door was open so I assumed that..." Vision trails off, seeing Wanda's mortified expression. "Captain Rogers wished to know when Mr. Stark was arriving."

Steve nods, smiling. "Thank you, we'll be right down."

"I'll... Use the door," Vison says before awkwardly walking away. "Oh! And apparently, he's brought a guest," the android says, sounding severely unimpressed.

Steve cocks a brow, fighting down the instinctual growl at the idea of a stranger in the compound. "We have any idea who it is?"

"The Secretary of State." 

Steve watches Vision's retreating back. He holds back his sigh and takes a deep breath. He keeps his claws sheathed, but that doesn't stop him from seething at the thought of having to deal with Thaddeus Ross.

###

The Sokovia Accords.

The more Steve reads, the gladder he is that he decided not to disclose his race. He was a werewolf before an American, and he knows where his loyalty truly lies. If the American government were aware of werewolves, well... He doesn't put much faith in them doing the right things about it.

Case and point, registration of enhanced individuals and charges pressed against those who refuse regeneration. The worst thing is, it sounds familiar.

He agrees that there need to be restrictions in place, but this? Is half of this stuff even constitutional?

_"And if we come to a decision you don't like?"_

_"Then you retire."_

Well. Steve had been looking for a way out for a while. Perhaps one had just planted itself in his lap. A way for him to slip the leash while looking like he was submitting to it. 

He doesn't join in on the conversation between his teammates, but he does listen. Vison, Tony, and James were making very good points, as were Sam, Clint, and Nat. Wanda was being very quiet. 

There was an obvious divide between them, and Tony was pressing Steve for his opinion of all of this.

"These will need to be edited," Steve says, flipping the page.

"Cap," Tony growls. He's in a reasonably bad mood, considering the bomb he just dropped on them. "Don't even start with your-"

"I've counted three human rights violations so far and I'm only on page ninety," he interrupts. "If they want to control the Avengers, fine. If they want to control all enhanced individuals, then we're gonna have a problem," 

Tony blinks. "Oh."

"What?" 

"It's just," Tony shrugs. "I didn't think you would take to this so quickly."

Steve shrugs. "As long as this is far from the final draft, I'll sign off on it."

Tony nods and whips out his phone. "I'll sick my lawyers on it, see what they can hammer out."

"You're seriously agreeing to this?" Sam huffs.

"Yeah, I seriously am," Steve says. "I mean, some of the stuff in here is absolutely not going to fly, but the rest of it? The best way to the other side is through."

Sam scowls. Wanda looks even more haunted than she usually does and Steve's going to have to work through this with her.

"Maybe they have a point," Nat says, and it's off again from there.

His phone buzzes. He checks the message and feels himself sag. Grief, a familiar friend, one he hasn't seen in a while. He's not sure if he's happy to see it or not. At least grief is something he understands.

"Cap?" Clint nudges him with his foot. "You alright?"

He takes a deep breath and lets it out through his nose. "Yeah, yeah, sorry," he blinks back his tears. "Just got some bad news. I'm fine."

###

He takes Sam with him to the funeral.

A hundred bodies all crammed into a chapel, listening to testimony after testimony. Scents and sounds bleed and blend to the point of it being overwhelming. The scent of grief was suffocating, floating above everything else.

Steve despised human funerals. He'd only been to two (his Ma's and Mr. Fletcher's) but those had been some of the worst events of his life. This one was proving no different.

He practically clung to Sam and scratched his neck irritably. He was about two seconds away from pissing on the floor and he really needed to get his shit together.

All he could smell was _human_ and all he could hear was meaningless chatter. Every nerve was on edge and he wanted nothing more than to shed his skin and trash the place.

He didn't, of course. He was a fully-grown werewolf, not some poorly-trained dog. He had more self-control than that. 

"You alright, man?" Sam asks quietly.

Steve nods stiffly. "Yeah, just-" He cuts himself off and darts his eyes around the chappel. "We should have sat in the back."

Sam nods in understanding. Neither of them were very big fans of not being able to see the whole room. Sam's reasoning was tied to his military background, and Steve's was tied to growing up in a pack with five other kids and being the shortest out of most of them. If he wasn't careful he could have been trampled by a horde of little girls playing tag.

Sam knocks their knees together and nods towards the right. Steve looks up just as the woman begins her testimony. The woman just so happens to be his former 'neighbour'. Sharon, he thinks.

The fact that she's related to Peggy is a surprise. Familial relations can be detected in someone's scent if one knows what to look for. But, given that Peggy's only sibling had died in the war, Sharon must be her husband's flesh and blood. Which makes it less embarrassing that Steve didn't clock that.

-"it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye and say, 'no, you move,'"

But only slightly.

###

The mourners leave the chapel one by one. He stays behind. 

He stays because the moment he leaves the chapel, he had to let go. Peggy had been a good friend, and he'll miss her, but she wasn't someone he was eternally bound to. She wasn't pack, family, or kin and he _shouldn't be this fucking sad._ He tells himself this over and over, and yet, the grief doesn't fade.

_Blood, Ozone, Steel, Gun oil._

"When I came out of the ice, I thought everyone I had known was gone," Steve murmurs, lifting his eyes to meet Nat's. "Then I found out that she was alive," he shrugs, "I was just lucky to have her."

"She had you back, too," Natasha says. 

Steve nods solemnly. He swallows his pain like a pill. His prescription is everlasting, but occasionally they undercut him. Most of the time they fill it to the brim.

"Who else signed?" He asks.

"Tony, Rhodey, Vision," Nat says, bitterness leaking into her tone. If she didn't want him to hear it, he wouldn't have. Genuine or not, he wonders why she wants him to think she's upset about this whole thing.

"Clint?" 

Her lips thin. Yet again something she wanted him to see. Maybe she wasn't feeling well.

"Wanda?"

"TBD," Nat chirps.

Steve hums.

"I'm off to Vienna for the signing of the Accords," she says. Suddenly, she looks worried. "You're coming with me, right?"

"Of course. That's why you're here, isn't it?"

She nods. "Just wanted to make sure,"

They stand there for a moment. Natasha looks down at her feet. The scent of anxiety and fear wafts off her in waves that were impossible not to sense. 

Steve opens up his arms. "C'mon."

She hugs him, clinging to him like a frightened child. Something occurs to him then, as her scent evens out and her shoulders slump. She trusts him.

"I don't want us to be separated," she whispers.

And oh. _Oh._

They were Nat's pack. 

Steve scents her. _Blood, Ozone, Steel, Gun oil. Romanov. Pack._

And that's what breaks him. He sobs into her shoulder, completely overwhelmed by his conflicting emotions. Grief for Peggy, love for Nat, fear for the future...

"Shh," Nat soothes, running a comforting hand up and down his back. "Shh,"

 _"The path ahead is unclear, sister,"_ he chokes out, slipping into his ancestral tongue.

"What was that?" Nat asks.

Steve pulls away and swipes at his eyes. "The future's uncertain, Nat."

Nat nods. "It is."

He swallows. "Let's try to clear it up a bit."

A joyous smile blooms on her face.

###

Nat fidgets with a pen next to him, clicking it open and shut over and over again. Silently, he hands her his stress ball. She nods thankfully and begins fidgeting with that instead.

King T'Chaka takes the stage. The chatter falls away, leaving behind a hush. The King surveys the room, looking to all of them with a solemn expression.

"When stolen Wakandan vibranium was used to make a terrible weapon, we in Wakanda were forced to question our legacy. Those men and women killed in Nigeria were part of a goodwill mission from a country too long in the shadows," 

Steve straightens up. The King invoked the unnatural posture given to him by the army. The respectful shoulders back, head held high stance dose little to protect his throat. It makes him feel both powerful and vulnerable.

"We will not, however," The King continues, "Let misfortune drive us back. We will fight to improve the world we wish to join. I am grateful to the Avengers for supporting this initiative. Wakanda is proud-"

Fear in the air. He tenses.

"To extend its hand in peace-"

He grabs Nat by the shoulder and throws them to the floor.

"Everybody get down!"

Ears ringing, glass scattering across the floor. He leaps to his feet, jumps over the desk, and sprints to the shattered windows. 

He jumps down to street level, rolling back to his feet and scanning the frantic crowd. He sees the remains of a news van. Ground zero.

He walks towards it, cocking his head. He smells ash and seared flesh, gunpowder and sparks. 

He doesn't expect to find anything telling. He expects the usual, carnage and death to further a goal, nothing more, nothing less. Yet another faceless atrocity. 

Something catches his eye, though. He flips over the hot metal scrap and finds a scrap of fabric, probably used to disguise the bomb.

He plucks it from the asphalt and scents it.

 _Gunpowder, Fire, Smoke. Bomb_. What he expected. Under that, though, was another scent. It was faint, but it was there. _Soap, Salt, Melted Snow. Anger. Human._

He holds the fabric to his nose for a while. He memorizes the scent. Then, he pockets the fabric and waits for emergency services to get there.

He sits on a bench and takes a deep breath and tries not to think.

###

Steve scowls at his phone. 

"Don't do anything stupid," Nat says.

Steve huffs. "That might be difficult."

"Well," Nat shrugs. "Try."

Steve rewinds the footage and pauses it. There, on his cracked phone screen, the frozen face of James Buchanan Barnes scowls up at the CCTV camera.

"He didn't do it," Steve growls.

"Steve-"

"Think about it, Nat. Even if this _is_ Bucky, which I highly doubt, this is just embarrassing. The greatest assassin of the century and he gets caught on camera? According to you, the intelligence community referred to him as 'The Ghost'. So why in God's name would he look _directly at a camera_ after planting a bomb?"

Nat shrugs. "Someone who wants to be caught."

"The thing is," Steve says, "If he wanted to be caught, all he had to do was show up at our front door. Why the fire show? Why bomb the UN?"

"This is guaranteed to be very public," She says, waving at the dozens of emergency workers and vehicles around them. "Maybe he wants our attention."

"He's had our attention, Nat. We've been chasing him for two years straight. Do you know how many times we've _almost_ caught him?"

She straightens and eyes him critically. "Zero."

"And now he'll have over a hundred countries out for his blood."

"Nowhere to hide." 

"Nowhere to run."

"It doesn't add up," Natasha nods. "But what can we do about it?"

Steve can think of a thing or two. He doesn't tell her that.

Nat sighs. She agrees with him, he knows. She just wishes she didn't. Because if not Bucky, who? "I'll be right back."

Steve turns off his phone. He watches her walk over to the young man they had talked to earlier. His father hadn't made it out. He bites back his growl. If not Bucky, who?

The way he sees it, he has two options. He can go after Bucky, or he can track down the real culprit. No intel versus a trackable scent.

Who is he kidding? There's only one option.

But first, he needs to find Sam.

###

Thankfully, Sharon's intel proves accurate.

It isn't hard to catch his tail. No sane werewolf has set food in Romania since the Great Hunts back in the day. And it seems that not even seventy years of not leaving a mark has managed to curb the instinct to mark one's territory.

All Steve has to do is follow the wolf scent to its strongest point. 

It's strongest point turns out to be in a shitty little apartment building in a sketchy part of town. The scent was strong but relatively stale. Bucky hadn't been home in a couple of hours.

Steve shimmies open the door and closes it behind him. Part of him rebels against standing uninvited in another wolf's den, but every other part was too distracted by the scent covering every inch of the apartment.

_Gunpowder, Mint, Plums. Wolf, Bucky, Pack._

He blinks back his tears because now was _not_ the time to get all weepy. He needs to focus, shut everything out.

He takes a look around the apartment but finds nothing of import. Logically, Bucky has a go-bag stashed _somewhere._ Under the floorboards maybe? Steve knows from experience that that was a good place to hide things.

So he goes around testing each floorboard. And when he finds one that's just a _bit_ too creaky and hollow, he cracks it open. Luckily, he does find a bag there. He tosses it on the counter. 

_Gunpowder, Mint, Plums._

Steve turns. 

His face says he's confident and unsurprised. But his eyes, his eyes are scared and confused. His scent is a whirlwind of fear and anger and desperation. Looking at him, one would have a hard time not feeling like they'd just been slapped.

Steve nods respectively and bears his throat. He needs to tread carefully here. Above all else, werewolves were fiercely territorial, and it's always a gamble whether or not they'll let you give them an excuse. 

He expects a growl, maybe some snarling. Definitely some irritation.

"How did you find me?" In a weary, hesitant tone, is not something he expected.

He tries not to let it affect him. "I'll tell you. I will. But right now it seems more important to get you out of here," Steve says softly.

Briefly, Bucky's eyes flicker towards his go-bag. "And how do you plan to do that?"

Slowly, he moves his hand to his pocket. Out of it, he pulls a chain. On the chain, a single silver bead glints in the sparse sunlight.

Bucky cocks his head curiously. "That doesn't answer my question."

Steve holds the necklace out, an offering. Surprisingly, Bucky actually takes it. He slips it over his head and tucks it under his shirt. Then he wonders closer and picks up the backpack and straps it on.

His eyes dart briefly up to Steve before he stiffens, his head shooting up. 

Steve doesn't wonder why, because he hears it too.

_Boots on hardwood. The cocking of guns. Muffled orders spoken in German._

"We need to go," Bucky hisses, and before Steve can so much as blink, he's throwing the window open and preparing to jump.

"Will you follow me?" Steve asks.

Bucky looks at him with his stormy eyes. "If you're faster," he says before jumping out of the window.

With a grin, Steve jumps after him.

###

Huffing, he slows to a stop in a field. He looks around. There was nothing but grass as far as the eye could see.

They had managed to lose their tail early on, but this was still more out in the open than Steve would like. The sun would set in roughly four hours, so they'd have to travel in the daylight.

They'll have to take the risk.

"Why did you stop?" 

Steve rolls his shoulders. "We need to shift."

Bucky blinks. "Pardon?"

Steve nods determinedly. "Can you take off your backpack? I don't know if the charm works with them."

Hesitantly, Bucky unbuckles the backpack. Steve is already unlacing his boots and tugging them off. Without him having to ask, Bucky follows his lead. Barefooted in the middle of nowhere wasn't a new experience for either of them.

"Alright," Steve sighs, rolling his shoulders again. He slips his hand into his pocket and pulls out a leather bracelet. "Here."

"What is it?" Bucky asks, turning the bracelet over in his hands.

"It's for your arm. I wasn't sure how it would react to a transformation, so I commissioned that," he says, waving vaguely.

Bucky frowns but slips the bracelet on anyway. He gasps.

"What?" Steve asks, concerned.

"It's tingling."

He smiles. "That's just the magic. It's harmless."

Bucky seems doubtful, but they don't have the time for Steve to reassure him.

He turns with a few cracks of his bones. 

He shakes out his fur with a huff and looks imploringly at Bucky.

The other wolf just gapes at him and makes no move to join him. Steve grumbles and nips at Bucky's ankle, whining impatiently.

"Alright, alright!" Bucky huffs, nudging Steve away with his foot. "Just... Let me remember how to do this."

Steve sits down with a huff, waiting.

Bucky rolls his shoulders and clears his throat. And Steve waits. And waits.

After a few minutes, he begins to get nervous. There's no telling when their trail might be found, if it hadn't been already. He needs to speed this up.

With a growl, Steve nips at Bucky's fingers.

"What?"

Steve tugs at his sleeve, snarling. 

"Stop that," Bucky barks.

Steve does, backing up and dropping into a fighting stance, ears shoved forwards and teeth bared, growling. _Fight me,_ it says. And even if Bucky wasn't consciously aware of it, it was amping him up.

"What are you doing?" He demands, eyes flashing poisonous yellow. 

Steve snaps his jaws, lunging forwards.

He's tackled to the ground by snapping jaws and sharp claws. He doesn't put up a fight. He lets Bucky pin him, holding him down with three limbs and sharp teeth pressed to his throat. 

He whines, exposing his throat further. An apology.

Bucky, growling, slowly eases up. Steve stays still, not wanting to encourage any actual biting. After a moment Bucky huffs, nudging him with his nose.

Steve rolls to his feet and whines, slowly waving his tail back and forth. Not his best plan ever, but it had worked.

The brown and black wolf in front of him looked very different from the wolf in his memories. Shaggy fur and sickly yellow eyes, covered nose to tail in scars. The fur of his left foreleg shimmers unnaturally in the sunlight, the colour of gunmetal. If one didn't look too close, it almost looked natural. Milo had truly outdone himself.

Bucky lowers his head and takes the straps of the backpack in his jaws. He glances towards Steve and woofs around his cargo. Steve takes that to mean _'Let's go,'_

So Steve turns and continues along the way they were going, Bucky following serenely behind him.


End file.
